> Unlike traditional pulsars, which are produced by neutron stars and spit out radio signals every few seconds or milliseconds, LPTs emit pulses at intervals of minutes or hours apart — a period previously thought to be impossible.
Pulsar's pulse comes from their spin contorting the magnetic field lines. When they slow down, they lose energy, and at some point they don't have enough to create XRays.
I used to feel this way too. It’s not really nothing if that helps. It still has 3 dimensions. Light and gravity pass through it. It has “vacuum energy” and virtual particles. There are still atoms, albeit further apart.
I know, but it is still a pretty dreadful thing to think about.
I mean, the radius of Boötes Void is 330M light years across. I can't fathom that amount of nothing. A photon enters the Boötes void, and if it travels through its center it will take more than half a billion years to reach the other side.
In a sense it's the same thing when I think of the end of the universe. There's a comfort in thinking of a great collapse. A sense of finality, like a board game being put back in the box. In the other hand, the possibility of a heat death is absolutely dreadful. Just a never ending lingering darkness with white dwarfs slowly fading into black. No ending, no great boom, no blaze of glory.
magnetars have got nothing on quasars, an entire galactic core with a 10 billion solar mass black hole in the middle pounding out radiation. (I'd say you'd have a whelk's chance in a supernova in one of them, but they're bigger than a supernova.)
aren't pulsars and magnetars very small when talking about stars and planets? Google's AI says about 20km in diameter but would need to double check that. On the other hand, IIRC the energy output of a pulsar compared to its physical size is pretty scary. You wouldn't want one in your neighborhood.
They are both forms of neutron stars, which average around 20km but are the densest objects known to man. Fun fact, one sugar cube of their material would weigh about as much as a mountain (https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1...).
All ordinary "room temperature and pressure" matter that we're used to -- that we're made of -- can be thought of as bathtub foam compared to a neutron star stuff that is more like a tungsten brick in that analogy.
Well, not quite, because that analogy misses ten orders of magnitude of density difference. That just hurts my brain.
Magnetars are a whole other level of eldritch madness. The energy density of their magnetic fields is ten thousand times the density of lead.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The vacuum around a magnetar contains so much energy in the magnetic field alone that thanks to the E=mc² conversion ratio between energy and mass it has a "mass density" that is the direct equivalent to every single atomic bomb on the planet blowing up all at once and the released energy of all of that getting packed into a cubic centimeter.
The name isn't random! It's common in astronomy to encode the targets position in the name in sexagesimal units. It's useful because you can read the name and immediately know where it is on the sky.
In this case, J1832-0911 means a right ascension of 18h(hours) 32m(minutes) and a declination of -9°(degrees)11'(arcminutes). Using this, you could quickly work out whether it's visible from your location.
Pulsars shoot beams out of their magnetic poles so they are directed but in a beam. Even the narrowest would be lots of stars. They are also spinning so they sweep a larger area.
This type of emission may be directed (or at least, emitted by something rotating, so directed at different locations around a circle as it rotates). That would leave it firing at Earth some of the time, and firing other places at other times.
Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.
If Earth is in the "sweep" of that rotation, the rise and falloff of the (continuous) signal will follow strict gaussian slopes outside the main beam, due to long-range diffraction.
Pulses could follow such a slope, too, but might not, and that would provide differentiation.
the concept of self respect itself may be alien to "aliens".
it's a human construct / concept.
also, stop calling them aliens. it is disrespectful.
(otherwise they might zap us with their thought cannon, compared to which light sabers are like toothpicks.)
they have as much right to be in this universe as we have. the term "alien" is a human and sci-fi construct.
and sci-fi is, well, fi(ction).
call them extra terrestrial beings, or just other beings.
we need to realise that other beings can have other sets of values than we do, or even none. heck, they may not even have the concept of values. and there is nothing wrong with that.
i can go on, but I'll stop here. my other being friends are calling me for a get together.
Pulsar with a period of rotation of 44 minutes?
> Unlike traditional pulsars, which are produced by neutron stars and spit out radio signals every few seconds or milliseconds, LPTs emit pulses at intervals of minutes or hours apart — a period previously thought to be impossible.
Pulsar's pulse comes from their spin contorting the magnetic field lines. When they slow down, they lose energy, and at some point they don't have enough to create XRays.
I wonder if they could figure out if there were two periods, a horizontal and vertical one.
Probably a magnetar. The scales of these things make me feel a deep sense of existential dread
> scales of these things make me feel a deep sense of existential dread
Perhaps ironically, what instills in me this sense of existential dread are supervoids, more than any massively destructive structure.
I can't really explain why, but something about the idea of a incomprehensibly vast nothingness really rubs me in the wrong way.
I used to feel this way too. It’s not really nothing if that helps. It still has 3 dimensions. Light and gravity pass through it. It has “vacuum energy” and virtual particles. There are still atoms, albeit further apart.
I know, but it is still a pretty dreadful thing to think about.
I mean, the radius of Boötes Void is 330M light years across. I can't fathom that amount of nothing. A photon enters the Boötes void, and if it travels through its center it will take more than half a billion years to reach the other side.
In a sense it's the same thing when I think of the end of the universe. There's a comfort in thinking of a great collapse. A sense of finality, like a board game being put back in the box. In the other hand, the possibility of a heat death is absolutely dreadful. Just a never ending lingering darkness with white dwarfs slowly fading into black. No ending, no great boom, no blaze of glory.
magnetars have got nothing on quasars, an entire galactic core with a 10 billion solar mass black hole in the middle pounding out radiation. (I'd say you'd have a whelk's chance in a supernova in one of them, but they're bigger than a supernova.)
Out of curiosity, do you have any insight into why the existence of something large would make you feel dread?
Probably because a magnetar could sterilize everything in a radius of dozens of light years if it has hiccup.
idk but theres a whole subreddit dedicated to it https://www.reddit.com/r/megalophobia/
aren't pulsars and magnetars very small when talking about stars and planets? Google's AI says about 20km in diameter but would need to double check that. On the other hand, IIRC the energy output of a pulsar compared to its physical size is pretty scary. You wouldn't want one in your neighborhood.
Yes. Here are fact checks for those who don't trust the easy AI answer:
https://www.britannica.com/science/pulsar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Description
They are both forms of neutron stars, which average around 20km but are the densest objects known to man. Fun fact, one sugar cube of their material would weigh about as much as a mountain (https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1...).
> but are the densest objects known to man
Only in the sense that black holes don't have finite densities.
All ordinary "room temperature and pressure" matter that we're used to -- that we're made of -- can be thought of as bathtub foam compared to a neutron star stuff that is more like a tungsten brick in that analogy.
Well, not quite, because that analogy misses ten orders of magnitude of density difference. That just hurts my brain.
Magnetars are a whole other level of eldritch madness. The energy density of their magnetic fields is ten thousand times the density of lead.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The vacuum around a magnetar contains so much energy in the magnetic field alone that thanks to the E=mc² conversion ratio between energy and mass it has a "mass density" that is the direct equivalent to every single atomic bomb on the planet blowing up all at once and the released energy of all of that getting packed into a cubic centimeter.
I need a hug.
Eh, let it happen.
Have you read Death's End? Stop dreading and start living.
That is very very slow for a pulsar. I guess it's possible but it would be weird. Pulsars are usually in the range of milliseconds to seconds.
Its obviously a Slow Rotational Pulsar (SRP) - I get naming rights as I invented it :-)
Please let it be the end.
> ASKAP J1832-0911
At this level of entropy I wonder if they’re not better off using uuids instead.
The name isn't random! It's common in astronomy to encode the targets position in the name in sexagesimal units. It's useful because you can read the name and immediately know where it is on the sky.
In this case, J1832-0911 means a right ascension of 18h(hours) 32m(minutes) and a declination of -9°(degrees)11'(arcminutes). Using this, you could quickly work out whether it's visible from your location.
This type of emission is not directed, right? Which means it's not firing "at" anything, it's just emitting in all directions.
Pulsars shoot beams out of their magnetic poles so they are directed but in a beam. Even the narrowest would be lots of stars. They are also spinning so they sweep a larger area.
My natural first question is. If it is coming out of the pole, why is it sweeping?
My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole.
A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially aligned with their galaxy? it it possible to tell which way a star or pulsar is rotating?
This is called the pulsar’s magnetic inclination and it’s often quite far from 0, all the way to nearly orthogonal.
Yes but this is a dynamic process that produces more correlated stars as the galaxy ages.
Astronomers routinely measure such parameters using models to provide confidence bounds for their estimates.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857
This type of emission may be directed (or at least, emitted by something rotating, so directed at different locations around a circle as it rotates). That would leave it firing at Earth some of the time, and firing other places at other times.
Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.
If Earth is in the "sweep" of that rotation, the rise and falloff of the (continuous) signal will follow strict gaussian slopes outside the main beam, due to long-range diffraction.
Pulses could follow such a slope, too, but might not, and that would provide differentiation.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the fine article gave no such details that I could see...
That's a good point, I didn't catch any explanation for that choice of wording. Wonder if it was intentional.
Not aliens sending signals, but some kind of interstellar industrial accident more likely.
it will end up bieng an advertainment channel transmitted by an exraterestrial AI looking for new customers after it outlived it's host species,
Every odd frame will be click bait, every even frame will be an ad.
aliens?
Any self respecting alien would send the signal every 42 minutes.
It says the burst lasts 2 minutes, so it would be 42 minutes of silence followed by 2 minutes of signal for a 44 minute cycle.
Has anyone checked the local planning office on alpha centauri for vogon announcements recently?
After I get my towel.
See ya soon and please be ready with the fish!
Maybe there's more redshift than they intended!
Many aliens would have to have computed the Answer independently as the news from Douglas haven't reached them yet.
you've got to think deeper.
the concept of self respect itself may be alien to "aliens".
it's a human construct / concept.
also, stop calling them aliens. it is disrespectful.
(otherwise they might zap us with their thought cannon, compared to which light sabers are like toothpicks.)
they have as much right to be in this universe as we have. the term "alien" is a human and sci-fi construct. and sci-fi is, well, fi(ction).
call them extra terrestrial beings, or just other beings.
we need to realise that other beings can have other sets of values than we do, or even none. heck, they may not even have the concept of values. and there is nothing wrong with that.
i can go on, but I'll stop here. my other being friends are calling me for a get together.
Well, they are alien to us, but that doesn't mean we need to alienate them.
A being is also a human construct / concept.
I mean, there are humans without values. We don’t have to go far.
if you mean hitler, he was an alien.
[dead]
Most likely, a very far away pulsar.
Pointed at Earth by aliens.